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Hiroshima's Disaster, Climate Crisis, and the Future of the Resilient City
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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Hiroshima City's unprecedented extreme rain and multiple landslides of August 20 took over 70 lives and wrecked several districts. The disaster was big enough to stay in the international news cycle for a few days, in spite of a summer rife with epidemic Ebola as well as worsening economic, environmental, geopolitical and other crises. This article argues that Hiroshima merits a great deal more sustained attention, indeed that it should be deliberately made a turning point in studying climate change and urban resilience. Surveys of the disaster sites, together with other evidence, suggest that Hiroshima's calamity offers multiple warnings about the impacts of accelerating climate change. This has led to a significant flow of human, fiscal and material resources, within Japan, that could be matched and coordinated with urban-resilience programmes in the US and elsewhere.
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors 2014
References
Notes
1 “Infrastructure spending to more than double to $9 trillion annually by 2025,” PWC News Release, June 22, 2014.
2 Marshall Shepherd, “Recent Urban Floods: A simple equation,” Weather Underground News and Blogs, August 13, 2014.
3 See (in Japanese) “Japanese Meteorological Agency calls it the ‘Torrential Rains of August, 2014,' NHK News, August 22. See also the Japanese Meteorological Agency press release (in Japanese) “Concerning official naming of torrential rains from July 30 of 2014,” Japanese Meteorological Agency, August 22, 2014.
4 See (in Japanese) “Concerning the emergency meeting of the Extreme Weather Analysis Deliberation Committee: Analysis of the causes of August 2014 unseasonable weather,” JMA, August 26, 2014.
5 See (in Japanese) “Extreme Weather: A succession of record-breaking torrential rains, centred on Western Japan,” Mainichi Shimbun, August 22, 2014.
6 See (in Japanese) “Continuing rains already 3.6 times annual average,” Mainichi Shimbun, August 27, 2014.
7 See (in Japanese) Sakakibara Junko “The unseasonable August is headed towards historic lows in sunshine,” Tenki.jp, August 31, 2014.
8 The relevant details are described in “Observations,” Japan Meteorological Agency, nd.
9 The satellite network is slated for expansion via the scheduled October 7, 2014, launch of Himawari 8. The satellite will see satellite photo intervals cut from every 30 minutes to every 10 minutes and the number of cloudimaging types increased from 5 to 16. See (in Japanese) “Mitsubishi Electric completes work on Himawari 8 with liftoff scheduled for October,” Sankei Shimbun, August 23, 2014.
10 See (in Japanese) “A 100-kilometre line of 25 cumulonimbus clouds in 4 hours,” Mainishi Shimbun, August, 31, 2014.
11 Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), (in Japanese) “Please be cautious of landslide threat in Hiroshima Prefecture through late evening of the 16th,” JMA Hiroshima Station Release, August 16, 2014 (8:12 P.M.).
12 The historical (1981-2010) data for the Miiri AMeDAS station are available (in Japanese) here.
13 See (in Japanese) “Bulletin on global extreme weather events, with Hiroshima's ‘torrential rains”.
14 See (in Japanese), “Persistent rains from typhoons, an August almost without sunshine, and then the shock from saturated ground and guerilla rain,” Sankei Shimbun, August 23, 2014.
15 See (in Japanese) “Hiroshima hit by more than an average month's worth of rain in three hours,” Asahi Shimbun, August 20, 2014.
16 See (in Japanese) “The dead in Hiroshima total 49; multiple, simultaneous landslides in 50 locations,” Asahi Shimbun, August 23, 2014.
17 See (in Japanese) “Specialist survey suggests mudflow momentarily reached speed of 144 kilometers per hour,” Mainichi Shimbun, August 26, 2014.
18 See (in Japanese) Damage to Yagi district in the Hiroshima disaster from massive rocks that fell from area dense in them,” Nikkei Shimbun, August 31, 2014.
19 See (in Japanese) “Nagasaki Institute of Technology Professor's survey indicates mudflow speed may have been 144 kilometers per hours, leaving not time to flee,” Sankei Shimbun, August 25, 2014.
20 Toru Hanai, “Landslides hit Japan's Hiroshima, killing at least 36,” Reuters, August 20, 2014.
21 The number is as of November 30, 2013. See pp. 32-3 of (in Japanese) “Deliberation Committee Towards Bolstering Measures Against Landslides,” November 25, 2013.
22 See (in Japanese) “Landslides have increased by 50% over the past 20 years due to global warming and the frequency of heavy rain,” Asahi Shimbun, November 16, 2013. See also (in Japanese) “Land Protection and Erosion Control,” MLIT, November 19, 2013.
23 See (in Japanese) “Even hard sedimentary rocks slide: Unprecedentedly intense rain overwhelmed geological strength,” Sankei Shimbun, August 23, 2014.
24 See (in Japanese) “The search for 2 still missing in Hiroshima slides continues,” NHK News, August 30, 2014.
25 Takashi Nakamura and Tomoyuki Hamahata, “Rescuers vigilant for secondary disaster signs,” The Japan News, August 24, 2014.
26 The precipitation, sunshine and temperature data, from August 28, and by intervals of previous 10 days, 20 days, 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days, and for all AMeDAS stations, is available here.
27 “Japan landslide: Death toll in Hiroshima climbs to 50,” Australia Network News, August 23, 2014.
28 One example is the New York Times coverage discussed by Joe Romm, “The Brutally Dishonest Attacks On Showtime's Landmark Series On Climate Change,” Climate Progress, April 9, 2014.
29 See (in Japanese) “An interview with Ehime University Professor Yadabe Ryouichi on how to prepare for landslides,” Mainichi Shimbun, August 21, 2014.
30 Professor Yadabe's profile is here.
31 See (in Japanese) “Repeatedly the victims of disaster: evidence from the scene emerging that the elderly are more than half, due to physical and mental weaknesses as misunderstanding from experiential insight,” Sankei Shimbun, August 23, 2014.
32 See (in Japanese) “The threat from intense rain increases,” Nagasaki Shimbun, August 22, 2014.
33 The Society will have the centenary celebration of its founding on September 27, 2014.
34 See “Black Rain,” Hiroshima Peace Media Center, nd.
35 See Carol Rasmussen, “West Antarctic Glacier Loss Appears Unstoppable,” NASA News, May 12, 2014.
36 Carol Rasmussen, “Parched West is using up underground water,” NASA Climate Change News, July 24, 2014.
37 Climate forcing refers to the amount of energy we receive from the sun and the amount of energy radiated back into space, a product in turn of the amount of greenhouse gases. “Global warming amplifier: Rising water vapor in upper troposphere to intensify climate change,” Science Daily, July 28, 2014.
38 Chris Mooney, “Why the Scientific Case Against Fracking Keeps Getting Stronger,” Mother Jones, August 15, 2014.
39 Joe Romm, “Jet Stream Changes Driving Extreme Weather Linked Again To Global Warming, Arctic Ice Loss,” Climate Progress, August 19, 2014.
40 “Global warming is already here and could be irreversible, UN panel says,” The Guardian, August 26, 2014.
41 Keynyn Bryssea, Naomi Oreskes, Jessica O'Reilly, Michael Oppenheimer “Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama?” Global Environmental Change, Volume 23, Issue 1, February 2013, Pages 327-337.
42 The “Risky Business” website is here.
43 Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), “FY 2015 Statement of Need, Resource Conservation and climate change [RC] program area: “adapting to changes in the hydrologic cycle under nonstationary climate conditions,” SON Number: RCSON-15-02, November 7, 2013.
44 See (in Japanese) “Local governments struggling with the difficulty of dealing with rainfalls that exceed assumptions,” NHK Newwatch, August 29, 2014.
45 See (in Japanese) “Disaster prevention stressed in MLIT YEN 6.6 trillion budget request,” Yomiuri Shimbun, August 28, 2014.
46 See (in Japanese) “Landslide and flood- control measures to YEN 290 billion in MLIT budget request,” Nikkei Shimbun, August 28, 2014.
47 See (in Japanese) “Landslide countermeasures such as erosion-control dams and danger surveys total YEN 94.3 billion in MLIT budget rerquest,” Sankei Shimbun, August 28, 2014.
48 Jean Chemnick, “CLIMATE: Obama pledges federal aid for state, local adaptation efforts,” E&E News, July 16, 2014.
49 Cited in Laura Barron-Lopez, “Sen. Murray tells Dems to push fiscal impacts of climate change,” The Hill, August 1, 2014.
50 “New NASA/JAXA Precipitation Satellite Passes Check-out, Starts Mission,” NASA News, May 30, 2014.
51 The details are available in English here.
52 See p 425 Dongyeob Kim et al “Landslide Susceptibility Mapping Using a Grid-based Infiltration Transient Model in Mountainous Regions,” in (Kyoji Sassa et al, eds) Landslide Science for a Safer Geo-Environment, Volume 2: Methods of Landslide Science. Springer: 2014.
53 See here.
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